


Hope, Peace, Joy, Love

by Andromache_42



Series: SPN Advent Calendar 2019 [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But are both 18, Characters are in high school, Drinking in Church, Fluff, M/M, Swearing in Church, Underage Drinking, religious irreverence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromache_42/pseuds/Andromache_42
Summary: “Oh my god, Dean, you guys are gonna get in so much trouble!”“Shh, Sammy, careful or He’ll hear you!”Sam rolled his eyes and Dean laughed. “Damn, Sammy, that was almost as good as one of Cas’s.”“Seriously, Dean, if you guys get caught I’m not covering for you.”Dean gasped dramatically. “You mean you’d let something like this blemish Cas’s perfect record?”Sam crossed his arms and lifted his chin haughtily. “Oh, I only said I wasn’t covering for you.”“Samuel, you wound me.” Dean pumped his fist in celebration as the lock he was picking clicked open. “Last chance, beanstalk.”“Pass. Don’t call me to bail you out, dude.”Written for Supernatural Advent Calendar 2019Day 3: Advent Wreath
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: SPN Advent Calendar 2019 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561129
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Hope, Peace, Joy, Love

“Oh my god, Dean, you guys are gonna get in so much trouble!”

“Shh, Sammy, careful or _He’ll_ hear you!”

Sam rolled his eyes and Dean laughed. “Damn, Sammy, that was almost as good as one of Cas’s.”

“Seriously, Dean, if you guys get caught I’m not covering for you.”

Dean gasped dramatically. “You mean you’d let something like this blemish Cas’s perfect record?”

Sam crossed his arms and lifted his chin haughtily. “Oh, I only said I wasn’t covering for _you_.”

“Samuel, you wound me.” Dean pumped his fist in celebration as the lock he was picking clicked open. “Last chance, beanstalk.”

“Pass. Don’t call me to bail you out, dude.”

Dean shrugged, then ducked into the church’s side door and let it close lightly behind him. The sanctuary was kind of creepy at night, the vaulted ceiling dark above him, dark windows in shadowed alcoves, the faint glow of the street lamp casting a dim light across the empty pews. He gave himself a second to let his eyes adjust before he made his way down the side aisle and up onto the dais at the front. The long altar was covered in tinsel and greenery, dominated from behind by the twelve-foot-tall Christmas tree covered in shiny ornaments. It was really pretty all lit up, but in the darkness it was less impressive, kinda cheap-looking. And boy if that wasn’t a metaphor for Dean’s whole relationship with religion, anyway.

The side door creaked, and Dean jumped, but even in the dim he recognized the shape of his best friend. He grinned as Cas loped up to the altar.

“Hey, buddy!” he called. Cas hushed him. “What, I thought you said the caretaker wasn’t around this time of night?”

“Joshua’s usually doing his rounds in the community center, but that doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t be quiet, Dean,” Cas said, circling behind the altar and crouching down. A set of keys jingled while Cas fiddled with something on the back side of the altar before emerging with a bottle of wine and two goblets.

“Holy shit, you were serious!” Dean choked out. Cas narrowed his eyes. “Oh, breaking into the church and getting hammered on communion wine, you’re good with, but you draw the line at cussing?”

“Shut the fuck up and get down here,” Cas grumbled, his eyes sparkling even in the dark. Dean grinned, then yelped as he stubbed his toe on the corner of the altar.

“Can’t see for shit,” Dean muttered, patting his pockets for his phone. He turned on the flashlight app, then swore again. “Phone’s gonna die,” he explained, glancing around for anything else they could use. His gaze fell on the small advent wreath at the front of the altar. “Bingo!” he said, grabbing his lighter from his back pocket and placing the wreath between himself and Cas on the floor.

“You know we still haven’t lit three of those,” Cas said as Dean lit each of the outer candles and the center one, bathing their small space in a warm yellow glow. Dean gestured to the light in triumph, which Cas acknowledged with a small sigh before busying himself with opening the bottle of wine.

With Cas distracted, Dean was free to look his fill. In the soft light, Cas was almost ethereal, his messy hair inky black in the low light, his bright blue eyes glowing like they were lit from within. It had been three years since Dean had realized his best friend was beautiful, and it hadn’t gotten any easier since.

Usually Dean was the one leading them into stupid, trouble-seeking adventures, but as graduation approached, Cas was finding it more and more difficult to live under the stifling thumb of his uncle’s house rules. As the ward of the pastor of the church their families both attended, Cas was at worship every Sunday, bible study every Wednesday, and every teen and community event throughout the week. He was kept so busy with church, in fact, that Dean wondered how on Earth he was able to be their class valedictorian, too. It had been Cas who suggested this particular bit of rebellion, which Dean had readily agreed to. Anything for his best friend.

And if spending time alone at night with a bottle of wine and candlelight made something warm flutter in Dean’s stomach, he wasn’t going to be the one to complicate it, _nope_.

Cas finally managed to uncork the bottle before pouring half of it into one large goblet, and half into the other. Dean wasn’t exactly a fan of wine, but he wasn’t going to turn Cas down, either. He took the goblet from Cas’s hand. Face set with determination, Cas took his own goblet and downed a large gulp. Dean shrugged, then did the same.

“Isn’t this stuff supposed to have, like, twice the alcohol content of regular wine?” Dean asked idly.

“I don’t personally care, as long as it’s all gone by morning,” Cas said, swallowing another mouthful.

“Zach up your ass again?”

The look Cas leveled him with should have been intimidating, but Dean just thought it was kinda hot. _Not the time, Winchester_.

It had been a long time since Dean and Cas had gotten properly drunk, so Dean could be forgiven for forgetting his friend’s frankly _insane_ alcohol tolerance. They’d finished the first bottle and were halfway through the second within about an hour, and Dean was feeling flushed and giggly while Cas sat apparently unaffected.

“How’re you still sober?” Dean asked, indignant. Cas shrugged.

“Fast metabolism,” he replied, the slightest slur to the edge of his words.

“Not fair,” Dean grumbled. “Looks, brains, and Captain America’s metabolism.”

Cas blinked owlishly. “Looks?”

Dean’s heart raced. _Play it cool_. “Uh, yeah. You gotta own mirrors in that mansion you live in, right? You _have_ seen you?”

Suddenly Cas found his wine goblet very interesting. “Um, thank you,” Cas stammered, and maybe it was the way that Cas seemed so sad, or his lack of confidence, or maybe it was the fucking _wine_ , but Dean’s mouth took that opportunity to run off.

“Seriously, dude, you’re like, a fuckin’ L.A. ten, and if you don’t realize you’re hot with your just-fucked hair and that goddamn jawline and those _fucking eyes_ , then I dunno how you managed to get valedictorian because you’re a goddamn idiot.”

Cas’s cheeks were flaming red by the time Dean was finished, and Dean suddenly couldn’t find anything better to do than chug the rest of the wine in his goblet. The room was kind of spinny by the time he was done, but Cas was gazing at him with fire in his eyes, not just the kind reflected from the low-burnt candles.

“You’re drunk,” Cas said.

“Don’t make me a liar,” Dean countered.

“I’m not going to take assessments of my appearance from someone wearing wine goggles, Dean.”

“Yeah, well, do I got wine goggles on when I wanna kiss you every minute of every god-damn day? I don’t think so.”

“You’re being facetious.”

Dean snorted. “ _You’re_ facetious,” he retorted, reaching for the last wine bottle. Cas’s warm, soft hand closed over his wrist. Dean’s heart was pounding in his ears at the gentle touch. It almost hurt to look back up at Cas, but Cas had his eyes closed, face pained.

“Please don’t,” he said.

“Thought you wanted to drink the rest—”

“I’m not talking about the wine,” Cas murmured. “Just . . . please, don’t say things I know you don’t mean.”

“But I do.”

Cas’s eyes flew open, wide and sincere. “Then say them to me in the morning,” he said. Dean ached to reach out and hold him, but the floor was wobbling and when he leaned forward to touch Cas’s cheek he stumbled, and suddenly the lit candles in the wreath toppled to the floor.

“Oh, shit!” Dean and Cas both scrambled to catch them, but in the process of untangling and climbing up from the floor, Dean’s foot caught the mostly-empty bottle of wine, spilling a dark stain onto the light green carpet.

“Fuck, Dean, the candles—”

“Wait, dammit, let me—!”

By the time they’d stomped out the small flames, the wreath was in pieces, scorch marks on the carpet, and the small stain had spread like blood in the darkness. Both boys stood staring at the mess, speechless.

“Zachariah’s going to kill me,” Cas whispered.

The front doors of the sanctuary rattled, startling both of them out of their stupor, and they panicked, stashing the carnage of their evening in the cabinet under the altar and sprinting for the door Dean had jimmied open earlier. They raced into the cold December night air, falling over each other as they sprinted the eight blocks to Dean’s house. By the time they reached the modest Winchester home, they were grasping at each other and gasping for air, dissolving into laughter on the front lawn.

“Dude you’re so dead,” Dean laughed.

“Don’t remind me,” Cas groaned, laying on his back in the frosty grass.

“Stay over, then,” Dean said, heart in his throat.

Cas sat up on his elbows and considered Dean for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I suppose I could delay the inevitable.”

Dean reached out to help Cas up. Cas stared at his hand for a second before grasping it and letting Dean pull him to his feet. They stumbled, Dean catching Cas by the shoulders before he could trip, bodies pressed close. Dean’s eyes flicked down to Cas’s lips involuntarily, and this close he could sense the tiny hitch in Castiel’s breath at the sight. He could lean in, then, and finally find out what those plush lips would feel like against his own, if he just had the nerve . . .

“Ask me tomorrow, Dean,” Cas said, a hint of melancholy in his voice. Dean nodded.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

“So _that’s_ where that stain came from!”

Dean threw back his head and laughed, his arm slung around the back of Cas’s chair. “Guess they never did figure out how to get it out completely,” he said.

“It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Cas muttered a little bitterly. Dean rubbed his new husband’s shoulder reassuringly. Those last few months of living with Zachariah before he finished high school had been pretty rough on Cas. After they had their first kiss in Dean’s kitchen the morning after the advent wreath debacle, Dean had done his best to make sure Cas spent as much time at Dean’s house as possible. His parents had welcomed him with open arms, of course, since they’d been friends forever, even if Dean had been nervous to introduce Cas as his boyfriend at Christmas that year.

The wedding reception was in full swing around them as Dean and Cas laughed, recalling the story of how they finally got together to the church’s newest head pastor, Jody, and her daughter Claire. Zachariah had quit in a huge huff when the church had announced they were going to perform same-sex marriages and welcome gay and lesbian pastors and leaders. It had been that change that brought Dean and Cas back to their home town after they graduated from college, and it was with great glee that they were married on a weekend three weeks before Christmas, almost eight years to the day they’d nearly burned it down.

“We didn’t nearly burn it down,” Cas protested, but Dean raised an eyebrow. “We _didn’t_.”

“Left a lasting impression, though,” Jody said. “Gonna join us for worship next week after your honeymoon, boys?”

“Sure thing, Jody,” Dean said.

Cas laughed, kissing Dean slow and sweet. He pulled back with a grin and said, “Just don’t ask us to light the advent wreath.”


End file.
